Your Right to Know

CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — His voice was hoarse from a long day in a long week on the campaign trail,
but that southern Arkansas twang was still noticeable.

And the crowd of 2,000 at Ohio University-Chillicothe still belonged to former President Bill
Clinton, perhaps more than any crowd here could ever belong to the presidential candidate Clinton
supports.

“You listen to the dialect of President Clinton, and you listen to the dialect of President
(Barack) Obama,” said Steve Swan of Chillicothe, a former high-school government teacher of 30
years. “You realize you’re in southern Ohio, on the cusp of Appalachia. One of them speaks with a
good ol’ boy accent, the other a more professorial accent.

“Who do you think the people down here are going to listen to more carefully? Someone from
Arkansas or someone from Chicago?”

Clinton, 66, is in the midst of an all-out blitz on Obama’s behalf, a blitz that included a
morning speech in Wisconsin yesterday, followed by events in suburban Toledo and Akron before he
arrived in Chillicothe. Five more stops are on tap for Clinton today in Florida.

Clinton was able to win in this portion of the state during his two campaigns for president,
something that Obama couldn’t do in 2008 and likely will not do this year, either.

Clinton won in the southeastern region of Ohio, which, for election-tracking purposes, includes
Chillicothe. Some people in attendance last night mentioned race as the difference; others
disagreed. But all of those interviewed by
The Dispatch said Clinton could always connect.

In 1996, the Arkansas Democrat carried the region over Bob Dole, 50 percent to 35 percent; in
1992 he bested President George H.W. Bush, 46 percent to 34 percent. Clinton won Ross County with
49 percent in 1996 and dropped the county by a single point to Bush in 1992.

Obama lost in Ross County by 8 points in 2008 and in the entire region by 6 points to Republican
John McCain. In
The Dispatch/Ohio Newspaper Organization’s poll this past Sunday, Obama was trailing
Republican Mitt Romney by 7 points here; it was 10 points a month ago.

Obama carried only two non-urban counties south of I-70. Clinton carried 12 in 1996.

In Wednesday’s Ohio Poll, a poll Obama led by 2 percentage points statewide, the president
trailed by 16 in southeastern Ohio. So last night, in the OU-Chillicothe Hilltoppers’ gym, when
Clinton said, “I know that no one who ever served as president — not me, not Franklin Roosevelt —
could’ve repaired all the damage done in that terrible (economic) crash in four years,” it had an
impact.

“If Clinton were running for president again, I would vote for him right now. As it is, I’m
voting for Obama, I want to make that clear,” said Travis Jackson, a welder from Chillicothe. “If
Clinton thinks Obama’s doing the right thing, I do, too.”

Clinton played to the crowd by tying some of Obama’s policies and achievements to things that
happened in his own presidency. For example, he mentioned that Obama has governed during the single
biggest one-year drop in unemployment since 1995 — when Clinton was president.

He said Obama wants to reduce the deficit in part “simply by asking wealthy Americans to go back
to paying what they were paying when I was president.”

Clinton also said that Obama’s student-loan repayment plan, in which people can repay college
loans based on a low fixed rate related to their salaries, was something Clinton tried on a smaller
scale.

“I always thought Clinton had a better grasp on the economy,” said Kim Hagley of Chillicothe. “I
still think Democrats have the better grasp. … I’m just a big fan of President Clinton; I always
was. He speaks very well to the middle class.”

Election research for this story was compiled by Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel
Rowland.